（外文电子版资料）Barry N. Malzberg - Gehenna.pdfVIP

GEHENNA Barry N. Malzberg Fictionwise Publications Copyright ©1971 Barry N. Malzberg Edward got on the IRT downtown local at 42nd Street for Greenwich Village. The train stopped at 33rd Street, 27th Street, 17th Street and Christopher Circle. As it turned out he met his wife at this party. It was a standard Greenwich Village all-of-us-are-damned gathering. She was sitting in a corner of the room, her feet bare, listening to a man with sad mustaches play a mandolin. Edward went over to say hello to her. She looked at him with vague disinterest and huddled closer to the mandolin player, who turned out—on further inspection—to be her date for the night. But Edward was persistent—his parents had always told him that his fearfulness was his chief detracting characteristic—and later that night he got her address. Two days later he showed up with a shopping bag filled with gourmet food and asked her if she would help him eat it. She shrugged and introduced him to her cats. Three weeks later they slept with one another for the first time and the week after that the mandolin player and he had a fight, at the end of which the mandolin player wished them well and left her flat forever. Edward and Julie were engaged only a few days after that and during the month he married her in Elktown. They went back to New York and started life together. He gave up mathematics, of course, and became an accountant. She gave up painting and took to going to antique shops once a week, bringing back objects every now and then. It was not a bad life, even if it had started out, perhaps, a bit on the contrived side. Three years later Edward opened the door and found Julie playing with their year-old daughter, shaking a rattle and putting it deep into the babys mouth. The scene was a pleasing one and he felt quite contented until she looked up at him and he saw that she was crying. He put do